1. Field of the Invention
The present invention provides an apparatus and a method capable of determining a material of a printing media, and in particular, an apparatus and a method that detects transmission light from the printing media to form an image, and analyzes the transmission light intensity to determine the material of the printing media. Furthermore, the present invention also introduces an ink jet printer that applies the apparatus and the method.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In a general case, when a media is printed by a printer, a notable quality difference will exist between different materials. For example, photo paper will have a good performance but the pattern on normal paper will be blurred due to ink spread. Before printing, therefore, users have to manually set the material and type setting of printing media at such as photo paper, normal paper, slides etc. The printer adjusts the ink jet head to jet ink at a suitable speed and amount according to the material parameter setting in order to achieve optimal print performance. If the material and printing media type are not set by users prior to printing a bad print performance may occur. In such a case it is possible to reprint the material, however, this is inconvenient and inefficient, resulting in meaningless paper waste.
In the related art, a plurality of light sources and a light receiver (or a light source and a plurality of light receivers) are utilized to receive reflected light and transmission light from the printing media, and then the light vectors according to the reflected light and the transmission light are compared at a co-ordinate axis to analyze the material of the printing media. The other method locates a rotatable circular wheel including a fillister behind the printing media, and determines the material of the printing media through monitoring a pattern generated by the reflected light from the circular wheel. The methods discussed above require complex mechanical structures and devices in order to obtain a correct result, therefore manufacturing costs will be high.